


Courting Disaster

by irisbleufic



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Party, M/M, Workplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-24
Updated: 2007-09-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 11:29:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holiday parties can take a lot out of you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Courting Disaster

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted to LJ in September of 2007.

The office party had been a disaster, even by Hell's standards.

Crowley gave the silver tinsel a series of good, hard tugs, but the sellotape held fast. He paused for breath, one elbow resting against the television screen, and rubbed his forehead. His headache hadn't subsided at all, even after he'd tried out several of the remedies listed on his copy the _HANGOVER 606_ guide that Dagon had left in sheaves for everybody to grab on the way out. As far as Crowley could determine, hellish hangovers were no different from earthly ones, meaning that nothing worked on either. He took a deep breath, yanked again, and felt his head spin.

Letting Aziraphale festoon the entertainment system as part of his decorating this year had been an even bigger mistake than agreeing to attend Hell's festivities. There was no earthly call for tinsel.

It wasn't that Crowley _couldn't_ do his own holiday decorating. He'd done it numerous times, all of which had been marked disasters. Aziraphale had never approved of the prefabricated look of professionalism, and he'd insisted that Crowley ought not to be so lazy and take a few hints from humanity. Crowley had told Aziraphale that if he felt so strongly about it, maybe _he_ ought to decorate Crowley's flat, then. In preceding years, the damages hadn't been so bad—tape residue on the wall, faint stains in his pale carpet where some real mistletoe berries had fallen and been stepped on—but this year, he decided, was an excellent reason not to permit next. 

The tinsel wasn't coming down, but Crowley's balance _was_.

The invitation had looked innocent enough, so far as Dagon was capable, but Crowley's hands had been shaking as he wrestled open the red envelope. Human invitations looked much the same, except when they were green, so some ironies were simply to be tolerated. The party had been scheduled for Christmas Eve, which Crowley thought unwise, as it had been usual to hold it a few days in advance, thereby minimizing Crowley's guilt in the wake of skiving off. Crowley's invitation had included a P.S., which, to his memory, wasn't usual. It implied that He Had Better Show Up, Or Else—in other words, Crowley had thought, swallowing, A Trap. The past decade and change had caught up with him, and sooner than he'd expected. Maybe that was why he'd let Aziraphale deck out the television and sound system.

Still, one way or another, he'd survived. There had been no trap, and he'd heard sufficient griping about the P.S. around the punch bowl that he could safely assume everybody had got one. Dagon had been sort of shaky in the hands, which suggested the extra writing might have been punishment intended for _him_. Crowley had felt badly about the punch that the old administrator had spilled down his tie, and he'd passed along Aziraphale's recipe for surefire stain removal. He'd left out the part where it involved Holy Water, so it probably wouldn't work for anyone.

Irritated and out of breath, Crowley hissed and snapped his fingers. The silver tinsel fell on the floor, a heap of smoldering tape and metallic plastic. Aziraphale had the most _hideous_ taste. He should have put his foot down and insisted that blue would have looked much better, but Aziraphale would have mixed the two and had the place looking like a gaudy and ill-planned ice palace. Crowley hated feeling cold.

Hastur and Ligur had been there right from the off, looking sour as all the lower-ranking demons turned up fashionably late. Nobody had been later than Crowley, which had put another nail in the coffin of Hastur's demeanor, and it was then that drinking and hovering in Dagon's general vicinity had seemed like a fine idea.

Before the evening was out, the piñata—whose idea _that_ had been, Crowley didn't want to know—had been singed to bits. The candy canes and chocolates had been hailed the finer for being a bit toasted. Crowley hadn't even taken a shot, begging off on the grounds that he'd indulged too much. To his chagrin, it wasn't a lie: Aziraphale had left him with a tray of sugar cookies and a box of marzipan.

Crowley snapped his fingers again, and the tinsel vanished with a _pop_. He glanced around the room, scowling. There was still tinsel all around the ceiling, and the blessed mistletoe was looking unaccountably green and perky for having been hung in his doorway nearly two weeks ago. He wondered what Aziraphale had done to it.

"You ought to be dead by now," Crowley told it, wagging his finger. "Out of your misery. If you had an ounce of sense, you'd have begun to dry out days ago."

The mistletoe just hung there, glossy in the sunlight, and dropped a berry on Crowley's head. It looked satisfied with itself, and the houseplants seemed smug.

"As soon as New Year's is over, there's going to be a major weeding," Crowley announced, glaring at the green menagerie. "And I mean _major_."

Aziraphale had insisted on coming over for New Year's, on account of their both attending their respective office parties and calling Christmas Day off-limits on account of philosophical differences of the having-consumed-too-much-alcohol variety. Crowley had assented to it only if Aziraphale promised to provide the champagne, as he was providing the space, and said space would take a lot of stripping and scrubbing down to make presentable. Guiltily, Aziraphale had agreed.

Crowley let the mistletoe as it was and went to the kitchen. He'd make some coffee and worry about the entryway later. Aziraphale was supposed to show up at five, and if there was anything you _could_ count on, it was that he'd be at least an hour late.

Coffee hadn't been on Dagon's worksheet, but humans _swore_ by it.

* * *

Coffee hadn't been on Gabriel's worksheet, but humans _swore_ by it.

Aziraphale had never minded the taste. In comparison to tea, it was bitter, and Crowley was forever telling him so, but it had a certain _something_ that went very well with desserts and also had a lot more caffeine. The office party hadn't been excruciating, certainly, but it hadn't been all that exciting, either. 

In Aziraphale's experience, alcohol was a surefire cure for boredom. On his third White Russian—novel drink popular in the States, Raphael had told him, absolute _candy_ —he'd still been bored and wondered what was going wrong. Possibly it had been the Metatron's incessant policy monologues, but more _probably_ it had been Crowley's absence. He'd spent most of his time trying to avoid Gabriel.

Crowley was probably having a devil of a time with those decorations, the poor dear. 

Aziraphale knew better than to show up on time: Crowley was simply never _ready_ for him, and his notion of an acceptable downgrade from Christmas decorations to New Year's decorations always missed the point. You were supposed to _leave_ them. Aziraphale sipped his coffee slowly; he'd let Crowley have his fit.

When you got Michael off duty, he wasn't so bad, really. He'd left the sword at home, and he'd shown up in a truly appalling tinfoil hat that said _ANNO DOMINE 1991_ in glittering letters. Things had been all right until Raphael got drunk enough to inform him that this was a Christmas party, not a New Year's jaunt in a strip joint for _crying_ out loud, and Michael had responded by throwing a punch and—thanks to his state of inebriation, which, Uriel had said behind her hand, he'd probably started working on before he got there—missing. He'd clipped the Metatron's shoulder instead, and the entity had stumbled into the punch bowl and sloshed the lot all over Gabriel.

Aziraphale, over his fourth white Russian, had told Uriel things simply wouldn't be the same without having somebody sane around. She'd objected, stirring her gin and tonic, saying that if he meant _her_ , he was crazy. No, Aziraphale had said; he meant Raphael. Uriel, who had just taken a sip, snorted her drink and collapsed in a feather-flurried laughing fit. Aziraphale had helped her up again, just a bit concerned.

There was nothing interesting in the newspaper, and he'd already done the crossword. 

Crowley had left him the copy of the _New York Times_ just before Christmas, saying a bit of international variety would do Aziraphale some good. Aziraphale wondered if Crowley ever did crosswords in his spare time, in addition to alphabetizing his music collection and losing Antichrists. Crowley had walked out the door, saying he shouldn't have to put up with that kind of abuse. Aziraphale hadn't _said_ anything.

The champagne was already in order, waiting in a neat, padded carton by the door. Aziraphale had thrown in a few bottles of wine for good measure—two whites and a red, since Crowley preferred whites. He supposed he _had_ been thinking a bit close to the surface that day, and Crowley got _terribly_ agitated around the holidays. Not to mention bringing up the whole hubbub they'd put up with late that summer in Lower Tadfield, and the awkward tiptoeing their way through autumn…

Uriel was sane, relatively speaking; there was no disputing that. Still, those sharp eyes of hers could see through more than just interminable distances and cloud cover.

Yes, he supposed he owed Crowley a few apologies, and some alcohol to go with.

By the end of the night, the atmosphere hadn't improved—Michael stayed in a snit, which made him less pleasant even without the sword, and Raphael looked for new targets to ridicule. Aziraphale would have preferred to stay close to Uriel, but Uriel had taken it upon herself to follow Raphael and patch up the damages. Some ironies were simply to be tolerated, Aziraphale had thought, and got himself another drink.

Reading wasn't helping his headache, but he had to keep his mind off the guilt of intentional tardiness _somehow_. He erased his handwriting and gave the crossword clues a thorough scramble. That ought to occupy him another forty minutes.

The office party had been a disaster, but he hoped that tonight wouldn't be.

* * *

Crowley was dozing on the sofa when the doorbell rang.

"'M coming," he mumbled into the white leather cushion, and fell off.

Aziraphale was _under_ an hour late, Crowley noted with some annoyance, and looking altogether too perky for somebody who had undoubtedly spent just as many days trying to recover from an otherworldly hangover as he had. And he had on the red tartan scarf that Crowley had informed him he was not permitted to wear under any circumstances—especially not festive or public ones.

"If I may say so, dear boy," said Aziraphale, setting down a handled cardboard carton just inside the door, "you look dreadful. What have they done?"

"Spiked punch," said Crowley, closing the door as Aziraphale stepped inside and unwound the hideous scarf. "Vodka. Or rum. Or vodka _and_ rum. What about you?"

"Well, you won't have heard of it," began the angel, unbuttoning his coat. "It's this thing with milk and Kahlua and just a _touch_ of—"

"White Russians," said Crowley, and nodded knowingly.

"You could have _told_ me you knew how to make one," said Aziraphale, and stepped out of his shoes. "It would have spared me looking like a fool in front of Raphael."

"Ouch," Crowley said, turning to climb the stairs. "Damages this year?"

"Punch all over Gabriel's robes," said Aziraphale, just a few steps behind him. "It was positively gruesome. Oh, and Michael turned up in a New Year's hat."

"I'll bet you fifty quid I know what Raphael said."

"I won't take you up for just that reason," said Aziraphale, resigned.

Dimly, Crowley was aware that both of them were exhausted and likely to be passed out on the sofa before the clock could even get _close_ to striking midnight. Maybe Heaven and Hell should have had the foresight to schedule their parties for tonight after all: it would have spared him Aziraphale's griping about Michael's _faux pas_.

"In a word, awful," said Aziraphale, making a face into the coffee that Crowley had poured for him. "It reminded me why I haven't gone in nearly a decade."

"Why's that?" said Crowley, taking a gulp from his mug, regretting it instantly.

" _Your_ attendance hasn't exactly been perfect," Aziraphale reminded him.

"Fair enough," sighed Crowley, and dumped his coffee down the sink. "Should we order some take-away? If you think I've cooked something, you're mad. Tea?"

" _Yes_ ," said Aziraphale, greatly relieved.

In the living room, they cradled their Darjeeling and argued over what to watch on television. Aziraphale insisted that _It's a Wonderful Life_ was classic holiday entertainment, and Crowley had to veto that assertion on grounds that it had far too strong an angel bias. Crowley was in favor of watching _Cheers_ reruns, but Aziraphale said that television shows hardly guaranteed thematic accuracy.

"You won't care about accuracy once we've gone through a bottle of wine."

"No, but I won't care _less_ until we've got halfway through the second."

"Point taken," said Crowley, grimly, and waved it back to the film channel.

To what was left of Crowley's surprise, a bottle and a half later, they were still watching Clarence and his suicidal human charge bumble through flashbacks that were, in Crowley's opinion, not half as interesting as Dickens's _Christmas Carol_. He was drunk enough to say so, and Aziraphale was drunk enough to agree.

"You haven't actually got a Clarence, have you?" Crowley asked during the adverts. He downed the last of the second bottle and tried to look serious. " _Have_ you?"

"No," hiccupped Aziraphale, slumping more firmly into Crowley's shoulder. "But we've got this fellow who insit—inist—insists that we call him—er—"

"You never were good with namesss," Crowley observed, and got them the bottle of red next. "What'sss your thing for thisss Beaujolais, anyway?"

"To be honest, I don't know," said Aziraphale, and dug in the corkscrew.

It didn't go down as easily as the Zinfandel, so Crowley let Aziraphale have it mostly to himself. He had forgot how amusing Aziraphale could be if left to his hidden talent of drinking with reckless abandon, and he had also forgot it was worth staying sober to witness. Aziraphale started making rude comments about the film well before it got to the "Every time a bell rings" part, and Crowley was able to change the channel without feeling guilty. _Cheers_ was still on, but he had no recollection of this episode, and he felt uneasy after about five minutes. He didn't want another interruption.

"We could jus' turn it off," slurred Aziraphale, trying to wrestle the remote control off the coffee table. "Terrible show, dear boy. _Terrible_ show."

"You don't watch this," Crowley said with an effort, snapping at the television. It turned itself off, without so much as a glint of static. "How d'you know it's rot?"

"I'm an'angel," said Aziraphale, which was the oldest of his inebriated excuses. "I'm—"

"Full of it, is what you are," said Crowley, and took the remote control off of him. He set it back on the coffee table and stumbled into his seat beside Aziraphale. " _Oog_. No more of that stuff, d'you hear me? It's worse than the punch."

"S'gone," said Aziraphale, mournfully. "I've got champagne, though."

"It's not midnight," Crowley reminded him.

"Don't care," said Aziraphale, and promptly started snoring on Crowley's shoulder.

 _Damn_ , thought Crowley, disappointed, and rested his head against the angel's.

* * *

Aziraphale opened his eyes, disoriented. Crowley's automatic dimmer must have been on, as the room was dark. The only light was the glare from the digital clock in Crowley's entertainment system. The fluorescent green was curiously soothing.

 _11:48_ , it read.

"Crowley," whispered Aziraphale, finding his tongue uncooperative. "It's time for—"

"Ssssleep," murmured Crowley, and snuggled his nose into Aziraphale's hair.

How Aziraphale hadn't noticed that first, he wasn't quite sure.

"Um," he said, for lack of anything else, as he'd just noticed Crowley's arm slung over his shoulder. "What about the champagne?"

Crowley made a vague, irritated noise.

"Too drunk," he said.

"Ah," replied Aziraphale, powerless to do anything except nod. "Yes, I suppose."

"Hmmm," sighed Crowley, his fingers flexing against Aziraphale's shirtsleeve.

 _11:50_ , blinked the clock.

Aziraphale breathed in. He hadn't planned on following Uriel's advice like _this_.

"Crowley," he whispered again, raising his head. Crowley's fell harmlessly to Aziraphale's shoulder, where Crowley snuggled in as promptly as before.

" _Mmm_?"

"It's nearly midnight," said Aziraphale, still breathing.

"Oh," said Crowley, his voice thick, and cleared his throat. "Sorry?"

"No, it's all right," said Aziraphale, somewhat relieved that he wasn't looking Crowley directly in the eye. "We've had, er, quite a lot to drink, and—"

"Sssame old ssstory," yawned Crowley, and squeezed Aziraphale's shoulder.

"Maybe," said Aziraphale, slowly, and felt his heart begin to race.

 _11:53_ , the clock said.

"What time's it?" asked Crowley.

"Seven minutes till," Aziraphale told him. The seconds were passing too quickly.

"And we're still sitting here," said Crowley, unexpectedly, and lifted his head.

"Yes," said Aziraphale, averting his gaze. "I suppose we are."

"Sitting here with no lights on," said Crowley, casting an irritated glance at the wall fixtures. "For a lark," he muttered, waving the bulbs up to a muted glow.

Aziraphale squinted; the suddenness of the lighting hurt his eyes.

 _11:55_.

"I didn't mind the dark," he said, and, bugger this _indeed_ , looked at Crowley.

"I didn't know," said Crowley, suddenly uneasy. He shifted in his seat, as if to remove his arm from Aziraphale's shoulder, but Aziraphale caught his hand and pinned it.

"Well, now you do. Look, I hadn't _wanted_ to go—"

"No more than I had," Crowley said vehemently. "It's not my scene. They don't get it."

"Better that they don't," replied Aziraphale, closing his eyes. He knew things were going badly when they started talking between the lines, and somewhere, Uriel was laughing at him. Worse yet, Raphael was laughing right along with her.

 _11:56_.

"Which is why we're here," concluded Crowley, lamely. He wasn't hissing anymore.

"Why we're here," Aziraphale echoed, and opened his eyes again. Crowley was studying at him with something that was more curiosity than unease. "Is—"

"Dagon spilled punch on his tie. I wish you could have seen."

"I just wish," said Aziraphale, tensing, "you'd been _there_."

 _11:57_.

"Too late for that," Crowley said, shrugging. He looked away.

"Of course it isn't," Aziraphale pressed on, helplessly. "You're _here_."

 _11:58_.

"I thought maybe it was a trap," said Crowley, after a pause. "How funny is that?"

"Not very," said Aziraphale, mortified. Not the kind of thought he wanted to have.

"Sorry," said Crowley. "But I did."

 _11:59_.

"Well, don't do it again," Aziraphale snapped.

Crowley wasn't looking at him. He was looking at the clock.

"Did you hear me? I said, don't—"

Crowley glanced back at him, eyes slitting in a rare blink.

 _12:00_ , said the clock, from over Crowley's shoulder.

"This is the part where I make a wish, isn't it?" said Crowley, sarcastically.

"No, it's the part where you stop talking," said Aziraphale, and _made_ him.


End file.
